I am a big fan of the EFF. They way we can now communicate with each other is astounding. It also opens us up to a lot of privacy issues. It is pretty obvious our ‘right to privacy’ has taken a back seat in recent years. As Americans, are we still covered by the Fourth Amendment, or because everything is electronic, it is simply up for grabs.
Facebook has 350 million accounts now. This is effectively a massive database. Coupled with other social media, they amount of information available is staggering.
EFF is suing the feds: tell us how you cyberstalk us.
Here are a few examples cited in the EFF complaint.
“14. The Federal Government uses social-networking websites in investigations. For
example, as part of an investigation into the distribution of millions of pages of court documents
obtained from the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (“PACER”) system, FBI agents
researched the social-networking activities of Aaron Swartz, a computer programmer and activist,
including his Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. Ryan Singel, FBI Investigated Coder for Liberating
Paywalled Court Records, Wired, Oct. 5, 2009, http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/swartzfbi/;
Wanted by the FBI, Raw Thought, http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/ (Oct. 5, 2009).
15. In another recent case, FBI searched the house of Elliot Madison, a social worker,
because of Twitter messages he sent during the G-20 summit notifying protesters of police
movements. Colin Moynihan, Arrest Puts Focus on Protesters’ Texting, N.Y. Times, Oct. 5, 2009,
at A19.
16. The Secret Service is using social-networking websites to conduct investigations, as
well. In a recent fraud investigation, “[i]nvestigators had spent months looking for [a fugitive] on
websites such as Facebook and MySpace, with no success. But when the fugitive finally opened [a
Facebook] account, it was immediately spotted by a Secret Service agent.” Chris Ayres, US
Investigators Use Facebook to Track Down Wanted Man Maxi Sopo, The Times (London), Oct.
15, 2009.”
From here: http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/social_network/social_networking_FOIA_complaint_final.pdf
Here is what they want addressed:
1) documents that contain information on the use of “fake identities” to “trick” site
users “into accepting a [government] official as a friend” or otherwise provide
information to the government as described in the Boston Globe article Is This
Lawman Your Facebook Friend? By Julie Masis, published January 11, 2009;
2) guides, manuals, presentations, memoranda, or other materials explaining how
government agents should collect information on social-networking websites;
3) guides, manuals, policy statements, memoranda, presentations, or other materials
detailing how or when government agents may collect information through socialnetworking
websites;
4) guides, manuals, policy statements, memoranda, presentations, or other materials
detailing what procedures government agents must follow to collect information
through social-networking websites;
5) guides, manuals, policy statements, memorandum, presentations, agreements
(both formal and informal) with social-networking companies, or other materials
relating to ‘privileged user’1 access by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms,
and Explosives to social-networking websites;
6) guides, manuals, memoranda, presentations or other materials for using any
visualization programs, data analysis programs or tools used to analyze data
gathered from social networks;
7) contracts, requests for proposals, or purchase orders for any visualization
programs, data analysis programs or tools used to analyze data gathered from social
networks; and
) guides, manuals, policy statements, memoranda, presentations, or other materials
describing how information collected from social-networking websites is retained in
government databases or shared with other government agencies.
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/social_network/social_networking_FOIA_complaint_final.pdf
So is it OK that the government uses social media as a form of surveillance?
“It now plans to reach out to the MIT team, as well as other competitors, to get a better sense of what worked and what didn’t.”
from here:
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/12/07/mit-team-wins-darpas-balloon-spotting-contest/
It seems the government is actively trying to get more data on how social media actually works. It took MIT nine hours to find 10 random nationwide positions using Twitter and Facebook. This 40,000 dollar, DARPA sponsored, social media experiment has probably yielded some pretty good intel, especially after what they saw what happened in Iran:
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/443634
So what can we do? Obviously politicians on both sides of the isle have given up on the Fourth Amendment.
” The Obama administration is holding a workshop today on open goverment.
It’s closed to the public and press.
The workshop is being held by the Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy for the public liasons at federal agencies who field requests for records filed under the Freedom of Information Act. The administration, vowing greater “transparency” about government actions, is outlining procedures for working with a new U.S. Office of Government Information Services, set up to resolve disputes over information requests.”
from here:
http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2009/12/freedom_of_information_open_cl.html
